Border Lines and Border Crossings Geographies of Race

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Border Lines and Border Crossings: Geographies of Race and Ethnicity

Territoriality: learned cultural behavior … or instinct? The precise marking of borders as Western cultural practice and outgrowth of European colonialism? Do borders matter in an era of increased globalization? The EU, “Fortress Europe” and the Schengen Accord.

Are you a 100 Percent American? There can be no question about the average American‘s desire to preserve his or her precious heritage at all costs. But does our solid American citizen realize that when he or she awakens they are garbed in pajamas, a garment of East Indian origin; and lying in a bed built on a pattern which originated in either Persia or Asia Minor. Moreover, we are muffled to the ears in un-American materials: cotton, first domesticated in India; linen, domesticated in the Middle East; wool from an animal native to Asia Minor; or silk whose uses were first discovered by the Chinese. When we rise in haste and go to the bathroom, we may use the bathtub or the toilet, modified copies of Roman originals. . . Returning to the bedroom, the unconscious victim of un-American practices removes clothes from a chair, invented in the Near East, and proceed to dress. We put on close-fitting tailored garments whose form derives from the skin clothing of the ancient nomads of the Asiatic steppes and fastens them with buttons whose prototypes appeared in Europe at the close of the Stone Age. W put on our feet stiff coverings made from hide prepared by a process invented in ancient Egypt and cut to a pattern which can be traced back to ancient Greece. We give ourselves a final appraisal in the mirror, an old Mediterranean invention, before we have breakfast. Here a whole new series of foreign things confront us. Food and drink are placed before us in pottery vessels, the popular name of which - China - is sufficient evidence of their origin. The fork is a medieval Italian invention and the spoon a copy of a Roman original. We drink coffee, an Abyssinian plant first discovered by Arabs. The American is quite likely to need it to dispel the morning after affects of over-indulgence in fermented drinks, invented in the Near East; or distilled ones, invented by the alchemists of medieval Europe. When breakfast over, we may sprint for trains, being an English invention. At the station, we pause for a moment to buy a newspaper, paying for it with coins invented in ancient Lydia. We read the news of the day, imprinted in characters invented by the ancient Semites by a process invented in Germany upon a material invented in China. As we scan the latest editorial pointing out the dire results to our institutions of accepting foreign ideas, we will not fail to thank a Hebrew God in an Indo-European language that we are one hundred percent American. (paraphrased from Ralph Linton, The American Century, 1937)